Lily (Flower Trilogy) by Lauren Royal Page B

over, intending to drift off again, to seek more healing slumber—
    Shouts. The stench of burning wood. Her eyes popped open, and she leapt from the bed and rushed to the window, her knees trembling.
    Smoke billowed into the sky—light gray, dark gray, menacingly black—and below that, red and orange flames licked upward, rising from what looked like the soon-to-be-roofless barn.
    Her animals were in there. Her heart racing, she grabbed a wrapper and struggled into it even as she ran for the door.

Chapter Eleven
    “You cannot go back in there, my lord! ’Tis about to collapse! They’re only animals! Not worth your life!”
    Rand ignored the frantic stable hand’s warning, instead waving him toward the long bucket brigade bringing water up from the river. Coughing, he set down the badger and quickly scanned the small collection of dazed creatures. The hedgehog, the fawn, a rabbit, a weasel . . .
    Lily had said she was planning to release the rat, and he prayed that she had, because he hadn’t a chance of finding anything that small in the blinding smoke. But he’d seen a shadow in the grayness . . . the fox cub, he suddenly realized. The fox cub with the broken leg.
    This one cannot run, he heard Lily say in his head.
    This one could not survive without him.
    He’d originally raced into the blazing barn because he needed to make sure Lily wasn’t in there. But once inside, he’d remembered her face, her gentle hands as she cared for her strays. He couldn’t leave them to die. Not the ones he had already saved, and not the fox cub, either.
    To more cries of “No!” and “Stay back!” he charged again into the conflagration. What air remained was hotter than his first two trips, drier, searing his lungs. Flames thundered, their orange, white, and blue tendrils licking up the wooden walls. Black, billowing smoke threatened to blind him.
    He stumbled toward Lily’s makeshift pens, coughs wracking his body as he peered through the haze, his eyes blurred with burning tears. Frantically he searched the enclosures, finding nothing. The blaze roared all around him, the sound filling his head, battering his senses. Heat lashed him in scorching waves. He couldn’t see; he couldn’t breathe; he couldn’t stay in here a minute longer.
    This one cannot run. . . . He pictured Lily saying the words, kneeling beside a pen, right there. He sucked in a lungful of acrid air and reached down blindly, his fingers encountering soft, trembling fur.
    And then he was on his way out, the cub a gasping, hot bundle in his arms, both of them searching for cool, healing air. Just as he cleared the door, a mighty crash sounded behind him, and for one terrifying moment he seemed surrounded by raining sparks.
    Then there was light, and he could breathe, and someone was pulling the cub from his arms. “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” someone cried, whacking him on the back. It made him cough more, and he tried to twist away, to run away, but he only stumbled. His eyes were still streaming and he couldn’t see, but whoever it was followed him.
    “You’re on fire!” she screamed, and it was Lily’s voice, and he stood still and let her beat upon his back until finally she stopped.
    “Oh God,” she said again and took him by the hand to pull him farther from the flames. They both collapsed to the ground. Rand rubbed his eyes, feeling grit, his head swimming in a haze of smoke and unreality.
    He blinked until his vision cleared. He and Lily stared at each other, ash and soot drifting around them and settling slowly to earth like a dark, eerie snowfall.

    “You saved my animals,” she whispered, quiet tears rolling down her cheeks.
    “You saved me ,” Rand croaked through his raw throat.
    Still coughing, he reached a hand behind his back, but it didn’t hurt enough to be burned.
    “It was your hair.” Lily coughed, too. “Your hair was on fire.”
    He reached higher then, to the ribbon that bound the queue he wore when he ran, and it